Mosquito Operations
3 Oboe Mosquitoes each to the railway yards at Ludwigshafen and Neuss. No aircraft lost.
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1 Hudson flew on a Resistance operation.
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ROYAN
347 Lancasters and 7 Mosquitoes of 1, 5 and 8 Groups. 4 Lancasters were lost and 2 more collided behind Allied lines in France and crashed.
This was a tragic raid with a strange - and disputed - background. Royan was a town situated at the mouth of the River Gironde in which a stubborn German garrison was still holding out, preventing the Allies from using the port of Bordeaux. The task of besieging the town had been given to 12,000 men of the French Resistance commanded by Free French officers appointed by General de Gaulle. The commander of the German garrison recognized the Resistance units as regular forces and the normal rules of warfare were observed. The French, lacking artillery, made little progress with their siege. The German commander gave the inhabitants of the town the opportunity to leave but many preferred to stay in order to look after their homes. It is believed that there were 2,000 civilians at the time of the raid.
The request that Bomber Command should attack the town has a tortuous background and it must be stressed that the version given here may be disputed by some of the participants. On
